Euro zone mulls access terms to precautionary credit lines -ESM

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BRUSSELS, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministers have been discussing the terms of access to precautionary credit lines from their bailout fund to make the instruments more effective, but the talks are not specifically related to Italy, an ESM spokesperson said.

European Central Bank chief economist Peter Praet said earlier on Tuesday that euro zone policymakers had discussed using the bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), to prevent financial tension in Italy from spreading to other indebted countries.

“In the context of the ongoing discussions on the EMU and ESM reform there have been talks in the Eurogroup for months on the ESM tool box, especially the ESM precautionary credit lines PCCL and ECCL,” the ESM spokesperson said.

“The aim is to make these two tools more effective by allowing eligible countries access with appropriate conditionality. These discussions are unrelated to the specific current situation in any Euro area Member State,” the spokesperson said. (Reporting By Jan Strupczewski)